CLASSIC COUNTRY/HONKEY TONK/&BLUEGRASS

The Queen of Country Music Holds Court
By BARRY MAZORArticle
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Disc jockeys voted to dub Kitty Wells "The Queen of Country Music" in 1953. The summer before, her unprecedented, outspoken single "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," with its utterly fresh women's point of view, had become the first record by a female country artist to chart No 1. She would reign as country's first true female star, virtually unchallenged, right through the 1950s and into the early '60s, recording more than 30 top-10 hits. Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Barbara Mandrell are among those who've credited Ms. Wells for opening the door for female country stardom in the process.
A crown, presented to the singer in 1973, is among the costumes, awards, mementos and other artifacts now on display in "Kitty Wells, Queen of Country Music," a career-spanning biographical exhibit at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum running through next June. But Ms. Wells, who reached her 90th birthday at the end of August and still performs occasionally, was typically modest when we spoke in the Hall about the reasons for her singular reign.

Walden Fabrey
Kitty Wells
"I don't really know what made the difference! But I think the type of songs you recorded mattered most. You'd pick out the songs you liked and hoped other people would like them too. I know that I was looking for a good melody and good words. A good country song usually kind of tells a story about something that's happened -- so that's what we'd go out looking for."
The most characteristic songs sung by Ms. Wells (who was born Ellen Muriel Deason and found her stage name in an old folk song) were in the classic, hardcore honky-tonk mode, evoking the drama in the lives of down-home folks come to town to haunt saloons. But they hardly reflected the home life of the quiet, Nashville-raised mother of three. She was married to singer Johnny Wright (of the country duo Johnny and Jack) as she recorded those songs -- and she still is; they've been together 71 years,
"No, those weren't my story," she readily concedes. "A lot of the songs I sang didn't pertain to my life, but I knew a lot of people would hear the song and it would kind of hit them -- you know, talk to them." Her records' titles -- "Making Believe (That You Really Love Me)," "There's Poison in Your Heart," "Heartbreak U.S.A." and "Will Your Lawyer Talk to God?" -- read like a trajectory of honky-tonk relationships.
While Ms. Wells doubts that many in her audience confused the singer with the songs, her crinolined old-time farm girl stage dresses, some of which are on display in the exhibit, were designed to stave off any lingering suspicion in that regard. She had a direct hand in their design.
"I had a lady in Madison that I would go to; she had a clothes shop, and it was mostly country-style dresses she'd make. So I went over there and got her to make me some. We would look at material, pick out what I liked, and she'd had some patterns she would show me."
Tune In
Listen to clips of these hit songs by Kitty Wells:
It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk AngelsMaking BelieveHeartbreak U.S.A.Life for Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright changed in 1952. They'd been living in Shreveport, appearing on "Louisiana Hayride" broadcasts there and playing hundreds of one-night gigs in towns nearby, the band (and when it rained, the bass fiddle) crammed into one car. When RCA recorded her but did nothing with the records, she pretty much decided to stick to being a housewife. Johnny & Jack's catchy hit "Poison Love" brought them back to Nashville.
"When we moved back," she recalls, "I didn't intend to sing any more, but then Johnny and Jack were on the 'Ernest Tubb Record Shop' program on a Saturday night and Paul Cohen of Decca came down there and told Johnny: 'I found this song. Do you think Kitty would be interested in recording it?' Johnny said, 'I don't know, but I'll take it home and we'll listen to it.' And, of course, it was 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.' So I heard it, and I told Johnny: 'Well, I'll record it if you want me to. At least we'll get session pay out of it!'
"I recorded the song -- and that really changed my life. I started making hits, and I went back out on the road; we started traveling on the bus in the '50s, and that was one of the best things that's happened to us, because we had beds in there to rest and sleep." (They were one of the first acts to buy a bus.)
Kitty Wells's hits would never have had the impact and staying power they've had were it not for the simple expressiveness and intensity of her singing -- and that quaver in her voice that always seemed to show at just the right moment emotionally.
"Far as I know," Ms. Wells notes of her vibrato, "that was always there; I never tried to make any different sound with my voice. It's just natural to me. I just sang the way that I felt -- although Owen [Owen Bradley, her celebrated producer] had me sing the songs real high. He said that's where the money is!"
Twenty years before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson would fight to employ their own working bands on Music Row-produced records, Ms. Wells's intact band -- which overlapped with Johnny & Jack's -- appeared on hit after hit, producing a streamlined yet traditional sound that featured Paul Warren on fiddle and Harold "Shot" Jackson on steel guitar.
"Shot just had a knack of playing that steel guitar," Ms. Wells recalls. "It seemed like he could just make it talk -- and he kind of set the mold for my songs with it. I think people connected the steel guitar with my records."
Another big change that came with the success of "Honky Tonk Angels": "People started to write things for me. At that time, there weren't that many songs that had been written for girls to sing, so I think that when I had that one big hit, it got the people thinkin' about doing that."
So does Kitty Wells have a queenly side? Asked which items in the Hall of Fame exhibit should get my special attention, she responded, laughing, "You need to look at all of it!" But asked to summarize her musical career, the Queen of Country Music's more familiar modesty quickly returned: "You sing a song, and you hope it will be around for a long time," she said. "They still play my songs a lot; I've been fortunate about that."
Mr. Mazor writes about country and pop music for the Journal.

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